HELL FIRE
John [Reitrof?]
[hand drawn red fire]
A guy with ideas, that Joe Gibson of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is attemtping to put across several Post-War World topics for the United Front of Stfandom in the Future [zero with line through it] and right now I want to help him get a start by quoting a'la verbatim some of his fine theories....
"First, the Chinese are more apt to become the culturalists, the teachers of the future world, psychologically and philosophically, rather than the rulers. They're the only other race besides a few Americans who believe in complete racial equality and tolerance for the whole world. All the others, even our closely-related British, believe themselves to be 'better' than some race or other. But Ubangis make fine college students....
"Second, we'll see plenty of the future as is. Rockets and Atomics are on the way in; people - the common herd - are already visualizing a sort of league of nations from the United Nations, post-war - political leaders will easily prove the faults of a league, as was shown in the former L of N's experiment - world federation glimmers on the horizon! Betcha twenty-five bucks we hop the moon by '80 - if you care to take up the bet." Then Joe brings the idea around to fandom's corner, when he sez:
"First and primarily, the purpose of fandom. If you want it bluntly, you might say 'to get people so darned interested in the possibilities, the circumstances, and the grandeur of building a better world in the future that once the war's over, the go ahead and actually do it, even if out of pure curiosity!' Now in the light of something that should come complete with cage, if you stated it publicly!
CAN THE FANS LATCH ON?
We've go to find out if the idea will catch. That is, we want to know if the fans are capable of becoming interested enough in the subject of the post-war world to start a controversy over it. We've got to see if they'll show enough interest to argue about the nature of the post-war world situation, the possibiltiies of a future world civilization, the desirable traits of any sort of world givernment, post-war, the sort of reconstruction which would be best to Europe after the conflict, and even clothes and fashions and such. Yes, we've first got to see if fans are the typ e[of merged into one] people who will be really interested in this idea.
"Supposing fans aren't escapists. Suppose they actually 'catch'. The result would be the greatest controversy fandom ever had. That has its bad points, of course, but it also has a Helluva lot of good ones. The fans would feud perhaps more bitterly than ever in some cases, the dopes cluttered throughout fandom who have some in from the roll-calls of Technocracy, Socialism, and the other two-bit organization would be blasted into insignifagance by the condemnation of their half-cracked ideas by the majority of fandom. As it is now,